March 5/Third Tuesday of Lent
Remember that your compassion, O LORD, and your kindness are from of old.
In your kindness remember me, because of your goodness, O Lord. ~ Ps 25.6-7
One of the sources of closeness within families or among friends is the sheer predictability of behavior: the dad who invariably insists on leaving early for the airport, the friend who is always late, the mom who cannot refrain from correcting grammar. Whether said ruefully or gratefully, “I knew you were going to say that!” or “He’s always been that way” are expressions of intimacy. Human relationships thrive on such security. As the author Anna Quindlen pointed out long ago in a “Life in the 30s” column that I clipped and kept, “Nothing makes you feel more secure than knowing exactly what another person is going to say or do at any given time. If my husband just cut into a slightly pink pork chop and scarfed it down — instead of holding up a piece at eye level, looking at it as though it were a murder suspect and saying, ‘Is this cooked enough?’ — I’d become pretty suspicious.” When the people in our lives act with a measure of consistency, we are able to develop trust and closeness. The same goes for our relationship with God. When we pray for God’s help or intervention, as the psalmist does today, we can do so confidently because we remember his past goodness: the baby that arrived safely, the job that came through, the illness that was healed. God’s kindness to us is both unshakable and everlasting; it is not only “from of old,” it is, as the Hebrew has it, “from forever.” Past, present, and future merge in God’s chesed, the resonant Hebrew term for “steadfast loving kindness.” We can count on God to be compassionate in the days ahead, because he has been compassionate in the days gone by.
God, Today I thank you for your steadfast, eternal, loving, and utterly trustworthy presence in my life. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030524.cfm
To hear the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, sing “Call to Remembrance” by Richard Farrant, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mOzpAvM8Vk
